A Holocaust survivor, an opera singer, and a rebbe’s brachah all come together on Tania Friedlander’s unique journey
It was endemic of the environment; unlike most other countries, Austria has barely expressed remorse for their horrific role in the Holocaust. Her mother’s cultural contributions to the local opera didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was Jewish.
“My father came to school to confront the staff over their anti-Semitism. I was outside the headmaster’s office, and I overheard him scream, from a place of deep anguish, ‘You Nazi, you anti-Semite.’ Then he came out, took my hand in his, and we walked out of that school for the last time.”
Tania had a good life otherwise. Her childhood was filled with skiing holidays in the Alps and trips to Disneyland. She became Vienna’s champion in table tennis and won a gold medal in the European Maccabee Games in Scotland, a first for the country, which made her a national star.
Still, living in the midst of Vienna’s Jewish community, mostly as an outsider, she couldn’t help but admire the large chassidic families walking serenely together on Shabbos and marvel at how genuinely content they all looked. “I didn’t know there was such a thing as a baal teshuvah,” she reflects. “I thought to myself that they were born that way, and I this way, and there was no way to change that.”
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